Milaan Foundation works at the intersection of youth, education, leadership, and health to build agency, opportunity, and well-being for adolescent girls in India. Its flagship program combines girl-led leadership development, life-skills training, technology-enabled learning, and partnerships that connect girls to local government, health services, scholarships, and other community resources.
In India, many girls continue to face barriers to completing their education, with poverty, early marriage, restrictive gender norms, and limited access to safe and supportive spaces constraining their opportunities and agency.
These patterns are especially acute in Uttar Pradesh, where Milaan works: only 66.2% of girls are enrolled in secondary school, and 14.8% marry before age 18. Social norms and a lack of interventions that focus on the root causes of these issues exacerbate the cycle of girls having limited agency.
With support from the Girls Opportunity Alliance Fund, Milaan Foundation will expand its Girl Icon Program to equip adolescent girls to become leaders in their communities. Milaan trains girls as “Girl Icons” in leadership, life skills, health, and girls’ rights. Each Girl Icon then leads a peer group of approximately 20 girls, creating a safe space for girls to learn, build confidence, and support one another. Together, they identify a challenge affecting girls in their community and design and lead a project to address it.
Through the program, Milaan aims to train 1,000 Girl Icons and reach 20,000 additional girls through their peer groups. By developing individual girl leaders who then reach and mobilize their peers, the program aims to strengthen girls’ agency, help girls stay in school, delay child marriage, and create broader change in their communities.
To learn more about Milaan Foundation, please visit the organization’s social media pages:
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